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11 September 2011

Links for 9-11-2011

For the past decade we have relied on the force of our arms to make America secure while our economy has rotted from within. America has lost its focus. America has spent more time concentrating on reshaping the world than on reshaping our economy.
We have created hundreds of thousands of jobs for military contractors all over the world, while we just learned that we created zero jobs here in the United States in the month of August as unemployment continues to stay above 9%.
Come home America. We must begin to focus on things here at home and stop roaming the world looking for dragons to slay. We have a right and an obligation to defend our nation. That includes working for peace abroad and seeking peaceful resolution of conflict, a capacity that, at our peril, we have not fully developed: I call it strength through peace. It involves the pursuit of what President Franklin Roosevelt called the “Science of Human Relations,” actually engaging those with whom we disagree most to attempt to find a way to co-exist peacefully....

The 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is sure to bring televised images of somber reflection. Looking back is, in some ways, easier for commentators and pundits than wrestling with the current state of Washington's so-called "war on terror."
The United States is mired in two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with undeclared drone bombing campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Launching these wars was fairly easy for the White House, with or without congressional approval. How any of them ends, though, remains unclear. Even the NATO war in Libya, which by many accounts has "ended," could become more chaotic and bloodier in the very near future.
The shift from Washington's time-limited military adventures that followed the Vietnam War — the relatively brief conflicts in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, and Kosovo, for example — to today's seemingly interminable and endlessly multiplying military commitments is one of the most notable, yet little noted, features of the post-9/11 landscape. Regrettably, too many mainstream journalists seem all too willing to encourage Washington's new "permanent war" footing....

The Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development, The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), and Knowledge Network

1. The Response to 9/11

A majority of Americans believes that over the last decade the US over-invested resources in some of
the responses to the 9/11 attacks and that this over-investment has contributed to America’s economic
problems today. The largest numbers believe that the over-investment occurred in the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan and using aid to build alliances. Small numbers feel the US over invested in
pursuing terrorist groups, airport security measures, and preparing first responders. Overall, two in
three believe US influence has diminished in the world over the last decade, and this view is highly
correlated with the belief that the US over-invested in responses to 9/11....

...Yet the public continues to be divided over many of the anti-terrorism policies that arose in the wake of Sept. 11, and these differences extend to opinions about whether U.S. wrongdoing prior to 9/11 may have motivated the attacks: 43% say yes, while 45% disagree. In late September 2001, 33% said U.S. wrongdoing might have motivated the attacks, compared with 55% who said it did not....

Moreover, only about a quarter say the wars in Iraq (26%) and Afghanistan (25%) have lessened the chances of terrorist attacks in the United States. In both cases majorities say the wars either have increased the risk of terrorism in this country or made no difference.

This is the archive of what was formerly the webpage of AJP. It now consists entirely of the essays and posts published by AJP founder, Maximilian C. Forte, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, at Concordia University in Montreal (maximilian.forte@concordia.ca). AJP was a Canadian organization for anthropologists interested in supporting struggles for self-determination, decolonizing knowledge production, and resisting the corporatization and militarization of the academy.